


The Morning After

by darkstark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 02:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5358341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkstark/pseuds/darkstark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Her arm stretches out, searching for him, to nudge him and let her hide in his arms. But all her fingers grab are the crumpled bedsheets of his empty side."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my first attempt at Stansa. I have a couple more ideas about them, but I wanted to test the waters with something small first. I hope you like it! :)

She wakes up from the sharpness of the grey morning light pouring in through the bedroom windows. She keeps her eyes wide shut though, and tries to fall back into oblivion, curling into a ball and enjoying the warmth of the bedcovers. It takes her only a few moments to admit defeat – the morning light is piercing mercilessly through her eyelids. She rolls to the center of the bed, eyes still closed in a futile attempt to sleep. Her arm stretches out, looking for him, to nudge him and let her hide in his arms. But all her fingers grab are the crumpled bedsheets of his empty side.

She opens her eyes, to see what she already knows; he’s not there. Her heart skips a beat, but she ignores it. It has already skipped so many beats for him. She closes her eyes again, listening carefully. The apartment is quiet, the only sound the steady beating of the rain on the wide windows. He has left.

She gets out of bed, not bothering to cover herself since she is alone. She goes to the window, and rests her brow against it, letting the smooth surface cool her warm skin. Her head is heavy and it’s not only from the mild hangover. Outside the world is grey, cold and wet, and she wonders how much of a mistake he thought last night was to prefer to be out there instead of being in bed with her on such a dreary morning.

She lingers at the window a little longer, ignoring the goosebumps raised on her naked flesh. The room is cold, and the view makes her feel a little colder still. She wonders how he must feel most days, alone at the top floor, surrounded by sky and rain, in a fortress of solitude. At last she turns her back to the outside world, resigned, and starts looking for her clothes. She must be going too – there is no reason to linger where she is not wanted.

The first thing she finds is her panties, tasteful black lace discarded at the foot of the bed. She puts it back on, and some half-hearted boost of confidence makes her straighten her back. She always wears this sort of underwear at functions like the one from last night, simply because it makes her feel so much more certain of herself. It doesn’t matter if no one sees it. The matching bra should be somewhere around, but before that she finds her stockings, tangled in the bedcovers. She remembers with a weak smile that they were the last thing that stayed on, and they stayed on for a while. She sits on the edge of the bed to put them on again, and that’s when she sees the note on the nightstand on her side of the bed. (Can it really be called her side if she has only slept in it once and is never going to again?)

_Left for the office. Didn’t want to wake you up since it’s your day off. If Robert has the good grace to finally send you the report on Pentos, forward it to me immediately._

The handwriting is neat, the message impersonal. It is the tombstone on the grave of her hopes. She knows too well that today is his day off as well. She takes the paper and folds it four times, having a mind to put it in the pocket of her coat when she finds it. She will not keep it, she is not sentimental that way. She will throw it away as soon as she leaves the apartment. It’s just that she cannot leave it here, where he will see it again; the thought is for some reason too painful and embarrassing.

She finds her bra near the door of the bedroom and puts it on hastily, suddenly feeling the need to be covered, protected by layers of fabric. She comes out of the bedroom and she is startled for a moment when she detects movement from the corner of her eye, but it is only her reflection on the corridor’s mirror. She looks at herself, disinterested. She is beautiful, she knows, even with tousled hair and smeared makeup, all long shapely legs and shiny copper locks and a figure she never really had to strive for. But she feels hollow on the inside, and her blue eyes look dim in the morning light.

It was so different last night. She felt electric, invincible, drunk on her own self-confidence, drunk on the effect she clearly had on him. She had never dared to flirt with him the way she had last night at the function, making her intentions so clear. And he had seemed powerless in her presence, incapable of resisting her, of refusing her. Even more than that though, he had seemed elated, his dark blue eyes glinting with a vivacity she had seldom seen in him. And she had thought then, that it was the right thing to do, she had made the right decision if she could make him smile like this, if she could make him look so much younger.

It had been the wrong decision, she knows now, or she wouldn’t have woken up in an empty bed with an impersonal note waiting for her.

She enters the living room, where she thinks the rest of her clothes must be – the ones that came off first. She scans the room quickly to find them, and though it is a cursory glance she takes in the simple yet elegant style of the place. It is a nice place and it fits him, and it pains her that she will never be here again.

She finds her blue-green dress thrown carelessly on one of the couches. She vaguely remembers Stannis tugging mercilessly at the delicate zipper, and her laughing at the look of desperation on his face and telling him – _now be calm, just wait a moment, you greedy thing_ \- and unzipping the dress herself, and his eyes, his eyes going round and dark as her form is revealed to him and-. She shakes her head, casting the resurfacing memories away, and pulls the zipper of the dress up purposefully. She feels dismantled, and the tight fabric helps to keep her pieces together like a cast.

She finds her pumps close to the dinner table, and remembers that she was already barefoot when they entered the apartment. She had probably taken them off in the elevator, but that doesn’t make sense, they must have already been off by then because in the elevator there was only enough time for him to pull her body close to his, one hand on her back and the other tangled in her hair, his mouth hot and life-giving–

She sits on the couch to put her shoes on again, but when she’s done she stays seated. Suddenly the weight of the world is pressing heavy on her shoulders, and she’s too weak and too tired to lift it. Her eyes wander at the few picture frames on the coffee table in front of her, and she picks one up absentmindedly. The picture is a few years old. Shireen is still a little girl with pigtails, and Stannis’s hair is a little less gray. Her fingers touch the glass over his face, as if she can extract from the picture the answers she won’t get from the real Stannis.

Theirs was a quiet friendship, unlikely and restrained, but stronger and deeper than it looked. They seldom met outside the company and its various functions. They’d never been to each other’s place. Yet their discreet presence in each other’s lives was a given, a steadfast comfort. It had taken a while for him to trust her, and she had let him take his time, unfazed by his sourness and prickly ways. The fact that she didn’t work for him, but directly for Robert, made it easier. It had taken months, but the seeds of her kindness had taken roots in what she came to realise was a thirsty heart. Somehow, they gravitated towards each other. They shared comfortable silences. Sometimes he actually smiled at her. Sometimes he’d tell her things that might have seemed unimportant to others, but she could tell that they were important to him – that the fact he could tell them to someone was important to him. She enjoyed his company – his dry wit, his unwavering sense of morality. It was easy being his friend. It was easy to fall in love with him too, though it took her almost two years. In the months leading to last night, she often thought how good she would be for him – for his wariness, for his daughter, for the bitterness he still felt. She had been so caught up in that thought that it took her some time to realise he would be good for her too.

She doesn’t understand why things came the way they did, why he left, why it seemed like a mistake now when it had seemed so right before. She doesn’t know if she could have done things differently, if she should have given him more time or if she completely misjudged his character. She only knows that in her gamble for love she lost more than what she could afford to part with.

She sets the frame down abruptly and gets off the couch, fighting for her balance. She is delving in things that are already dead and gone, no matter how alive they are in her thoughts. She needs to leave – she has stayed longer than she ought to. She finds her coat in the foyer, and she is about to pick it up when she hears the key turn in the lock of the door and Stannis bursts in.

He looks disheveled, his short hair plastered on his head and his coat wet from the rain. His eyes are round, surprise and resolution mixed in the dark blue. He looks handsome and oddly vulnerable as he stops in his tracks, trying not to stumble on her in the small foyer.

“I thought you left” she says simply, not trusting herself at the moment to say anything more.

“I did. I left, but-” he falters, his clipped words falling into the tense silence between them.

“Sansa-” he tries again, and she wishes that this was enough, that the way he says her name encompassed everything she wants to hear, but she needs more.

She stands still, waiting. She is tired of hoping, of wondering. She has made her decision, she has let him know what she wants. It is his choice now. She knows that he has more things to risk, more baggage to carry. His personal life is a mess, his divorce had been savage to say the least, his relationship with his daughter is fragile and the ties with his brothers strained. But he still needs to make a decision about her, about them, and he seems to know this, because his jaw is clenched and there’s a crease between his eyebrows. He’s standing quite still too, looking like a foreign body in his own foyer.

She’s waiting, calm. She loves him enough to understand his fears, his hesitation.

Finally, Stannis stretches out his arm, reaching for her, covering the distance between them.


End file.
